Kenny Neal describes his blues as an upbeat mix of Louisiana influences. (Courtesy of Kenny Neal)

Bryan Morris couldn’t be happier to be bringing the blues back home.

For nine years now, the Mobile native has played drums for award-winning Louisiana bluesman Kenny Neal. It’s a globe-trotting gig, regularly taking Morris around the country and across the ocean to play at huge European festivals. But even though Neal’s band is based in Baton Rouge, Morris has never had a chance to show folks in his hometown what he’s been up to all this time.

That changes this weekend, when Neal will appear at the Holiday Inn Downtown. And the night can’t come soon enough for Morris, whose roots in Mobile music tradition run deep.

He’s the son of the late Joe Morris Sr., a saxophonist and bandleader who was a mentor to several generations of jazz musicians, and the brother of Joe “JoJo” Morris Jr., a highly regarded area bassist.

Kenny Neal in concert

7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 24, at the Holiday Inn Downtown, 301 Government St. Doors open at 6 p.m.

Tickets are $25 in advance and at the doors. Advance tickets are available at Northside Check Exchange.

“I started off when I was about 5 years old, playing professionally with my father,” Morris said. By his early teens he was performing with a group call the Surgeon General. But after graduating from Theodore High School he moved on to Southern University, and has done most of his work out of earshot of the people he grew up with. He’s hoping to rectify that come Saturday.

“We tour all over the world, but coming home to Mobile is very, very important to me,” Morris said. “What I would like for them to take away from the experience is the love of the music. When we play, we play from the heart. And you will definitely feel it.”

“Of course, he’s a blues artist, and one thing I can truly say, he’s going to bring the Louisiana swamp blues to Mobile,” Morris said. “It’s a very energetic type of blues. It’s not the little sleepy blues, the lazy blues.”

Bryan Morris is happy to be playing a Mobile show with Kenny Neal after touring with him for nine years. (Courtesy of Mary Morris)

Neal, speaking from home in California, was quick to second that impression. (He divides his time between the West Coast and Baton Rouge, he said, because “I can’t rest in Louisiana, they party too hard.”)

“All across the country they call me the swamp-blues guy,” Neal said. “It’s a variety of music combined in one.”

It draws on the exuberance of Cajun music, the depth Delta blues and the sheer melting-pot variety of New Orleans tradition,” he said.

“It’s not like that old cryin’ blues. It’s different,” he said. “I would like for them to experience this type of music that they can relate to, and thought that it didn’t exist anymore.”

The band routinely travels to about 15 countries a year, he said, and often plays to festival crowds of 15,000 or more people.

“They love us all over the world,” he said. “It works.”

Though the Mobile show isn’t technically a homecoming for him, he too feels like he’s got some overdue business to take care of.

“I’m just excited to come there, because I just get so tired of going on tour, going through Mobile, picking up Bryan, and I go, there’s got to be something here,” he said. “I’m just excited to be sticking my head in the door and getting a chance to play for some folks.”

“I’m so proud to have him aboard,” he said of Morris.

Morris, for his part, said he was proud to finally get a chance to share the music he’s been helping make for so long.